Last Swim: Slight but uncomplying coming of age drama.

⭐⭐1/2

Rob Ryan

I very rarely bring myself to go the toilet in any movie showing even if I feel I may explode from my insides, which is why I am always careful to never drink before a showing and even if I do, I make sure to have a bathroom break before the film starts just to be on the safe side, in the case of this however, I made the error of having two pints of Morretti larger in the cinema restaurant lobby just an hour before the preview showing of Last Swim this Tuesday and about 30 minutes in, I finally gave in, I rushed downstairs to the toilet, as I finally came back I quietly asked my brother who attends most showings with me what I had missed and to my surprise according to him, there wasn't much I missed that had any real significance, The scene I walked out of featured a bunch of characters having innocuous conversations while riding on rental bikes on the streets of London on a hot summer's day only to come back to a scene of characters having innocuous conversations while riding on rental bikes on the streets of London on a hot summer's day.

Last Swim is a low budget British independent film that takes place in all in one day, we follow Ziba (Deba Hekmat) who is awaiting her A-Levels results on quantum physics and has already planned to spend the rest of the day celebrating with her school mates across London on what I can only guess is the Summer of 2022 considering characters keep bringing up that it's 40 something degrees. Ziba has been on and off school because of a diagnosis of what is presumed to be cancer and on her way to school, her mother receives a phone call from their doctor because of a possible development in her condition and asks if she can come over, to which Ziba refuses due to wanting to spend her time to her oblivious friends who don't know the severity of her illness. Ziba wants to conclude her day by staring into the sky as a meteor shower that only comes once every number of years will be in full view for everyone to see at Midnight, but her casual blackouts and nosebleeds make it hard to conceal to her mates what she's been hiding for a long time.

While Last Swim can be described as a hangout movie in the same vain as Dazed and Confused and a lot of Low budget American movies of the 80s and 90s, the most comparable movie of its sort that came into mind was French New Wave classic Cléo from 5 to 7 from 1962 where a singer awaiting an updates on her possible stomach cancer, goes through an existential crisis as a result. While they may be radically different interms of period, presentation and tone, Cléo had a lot of subtext to sink your teeth into thus giving that endless rewatch value, Last Swim chronicles a girl trying to enjoy her potential last moments as much as she can but despite that emotional premise, I ended up having a hard time trying to connect with it. When I was no longer distracted by my need to release by bowles, I now had a chance to spend the remaining hour of the film trying to look it at it objectively but even then I felt as though I was being kept at an arms distance and by the end I didn't feel this movie added up to much.

One problem might be is the movie's insistence to care about a character just because she has cancer and that's it. Don't get me wrong, I wish we lived in a world where we didn't have to worry about cancer affecting anyone of us, but It's such an overused plot device that it feels like a shield to shadow the fact that there isn't really much substance to a character despite the best efforts of the actors. While I appreciated that they didn't use cancer for melodrama like a lot of teenage/young adult movies of it's ilk it's not an automatic pass to get me to start caring.

Another problem is the inclusion of a certain character who feels oddly contrived, that character is named Malcom (Denzel Baidoo) and to this day I'm not exactly sure who he was in relation to this friend group. His relationship to Ziba is woefully unearned and only develops in a short time window where they start as acquaintances and end as potential lovers by the end and the only basis for romance is due to a personal tragedy he's facing at home and that's it. As a result all of the other supporting characters including one stereotypical tough lad who wears his baseball cap back to front, feel pushed to the sidelines, wouldn't it have been more interesting if the person she was desperate to start romancing with was someone she had known fully for years but had maybe surpassed these feelings for one reason or another?

All this culminates in a dramatic scene in the third act which without spoiling, is completely out of nowhere. As if the filmmakers where desperate to pull the rug from under us for some reconciliation where all of the characters petty grievances are inconsequential compared to everyone being together as friends, I didn't buy it. By the end I still didn't care.

With all that said I don't think this is a bad film overall, at 1 hour and 36 minutes, it captures that fleeting feeling of time moving too quickly that the character feels throughout including when she sets eyes on the meteor shower, maybe a short film might have captured that fleeting feeling better, maybe I was still a little woozy from the beer, I don't know. I can't say this worked for me overall but if this sounds remotely compelling to you and you can stomach watching a movie where very little happens (which isn't automatically a bad thing) then this might do something for you.